Short answer. Both are required. Article 283 requires the employer to serve a written notice on the workers and the Ministry of Labor and Employment at least one month before a retrenchment or closure. Notifying DOLE alone does not satisfy the article — the law names workers as a separate, required recipient of the same written notice.
What the law says
by serving a written notice on the workers and the Ministry of Labor and Employment at least one (1) month before the intended date thereof.
Labor Code, Article 283 — Closure And Personnel Reduction. Read the full provision →
The article names two recipients, not one
Article 283's notice requirement is written conjunctively: the employer must serve written notice on the workers and the Ministry of Labor and Employment. That wording lists two distinct audiences for the same notice, not a choice between them. Reporting a closure to the labor ministry is a real and necessary step, but it is not a substitute for telling the workers themselves — the article treats both as required, and a closure carried out after informing only one of the two has not fulfilled what this provision demands. It also does not say which notice must be served first, only that both are required before the one-month deadline.
Why the worker-facing notice matters on its own
The requirement that workers themselves be notified exists because they are the ones whose livelihood is directly affected, and DOLE being informed does not put that information in front of the people who need to plan around it — find new work, prepare financially, or otherwise respond. A notice filed with the ministry that never reaches the employees leaves the very people the one-month period is meant to protect without the warning the law intended them to have. The two notices serve different, complementary purposes rather than duplicating each other.
What personal notice should actually look like
Article 283 specifies that the notice must be written and given at least one (1) month before the intended date of the closure or reduction, which points toward something concrete and dated, not a verbal heads-up or a general announcement after the fact. If your employer only filed paperwork with DOLE and never gave you or your coworkers anything written and dated a month in advance, that is worth noting carefully, since the article's own language treats the worker notice as a distinct, independently required step rather than something DOLE's copy can stand in for. Article 283 also does not excuse an employer who serves both notices late, after the closure has already taken effect — the one-month lead time governs the timing of the notice, not merely its eventual delivery, so a notice given after the fact does not satisfy what the article requires.
Notice is not the same as approval
The assumption is worth correcting in the other direction too. Article 283 requires the employer to serve written notice on the Ministry of Labor and Employment; it does not require the ministry to approve the closure or the reduction first, and nothing in the article makes the employer's plan conditional on a clearance or permit. The notice is a report and a warning period, not an application. What the article does condition the power on is purpose — the employer may close unless the closing is for the purpose of circumventing the provisions of this Title. A shutdown staged to be rid of particular employees therefore falls outside the provision altogether, however punctually the two notices were served. Notice is necessary but never sufficient, and the separation pay the same article fixes stays due regardless of how the notices were handled.